March 15 (Bloomberg) -- Qatar tripled its gold reserves in January from the previous month to protect against a weakening dollar.

The Persian Gulf state, owner of the world's largest single natural gas field, increased its holding of gold to 158.1 million Qatari riyals ($43.4 million) from 44.3 million riyals in December, the Qatar Central Bank said in its monthly bulletin. Foreign currency reserves fell 1.5 percent to 15.5 billion riyals in the same period.

Qatar joins oil producers including Iran, Venezuela, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates, looking to shift their currency reserves out of dollars or sell their oil, currently priced in dollars, in euros.

``Qatar and other central banks have indicated that they are looking to diversify their reserves as the dollar weakens, to protect the size of their reserves in non-dollar terms,'' Monica Malik, an economist with Standard Chartered Plc, said in a telephone interview from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, today.

The dollar traded at 1.3216 against the euro as of 8:05 a.m. in London, compared with 1.3223 last yesterday.

Gold spot prices jumped one tenth of a percent immediately after the statement. It was trading up 50 cents at $645.20 as of 07.45 a.m. in London today.

Calls to the Qatar Central Bank this morning were not returned.

Oil Revenue

The United Arab Emirates will convert 8 percent of its foreign-exchange reserves to euros from dollars before September after the U.S. currency slumped in the last year, the country's central bank governor said Dec. 24.

Gulf Arab energy producers will earn as much as $500 billion from oil sales this year, the International Monetary Fund forecasts. The region's central bank reserves represent a fraction of the currency holdings of state-owned investment firms such as Abu Dhabi Investment Authority which is estimated to have over half-a-trillion dollars under management.

The dollar fell 9.4 percent against the euro in the past 12 months, partly as a result of the growing U.S. current account deficit, the broadest measure of U.S. trade with the rest of the world.

Central Banks have contributed little to the price of gold, which has risen for the past six years. Gold holdings at central banks last year were the lowest since 1948, according to World Gold Council and International Monetary Fund data.

``There is a lot of speculation some major central banks out of Asia or emerging countries will be increasing their gold position,'' said Markus Bachmann, manager of the $280 million Craton Capital Precious Metals Fund in Johannesburg. ``I'm very cynical of those views.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Matthew Brown in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, at mbrown42@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: March 15, 2007 04:19 EDT